JUDGMENT

Fforde, J. - Bahadur has been tried by the learned Sessions Judge of Rawalpindi for the murder of Mt. Amrit Kaur and Teja Singh, two children aged seven and four years respectively. The defence was that at the time the murders were committed Bahadur was insane. The learned Sessions Judge has accepted this defence and acquitted the accused.

2. The Grown now appeals against this acquittal, contending that Bahadur should have been convicted of murder and sentenced to death. The sole question which arises for determination in this appeal is whether or not Bahadur at the time when he killed Mt. Amrit Kaur and Teja Singh knew that what he was doing was either wrong or contrary to law. The circumstances of the crime are not disputed and may be stated very shortly.

3. Mt. Maya Devi was living alone with her two children at Turkwal while her husband was carrying on a shop keeping business at Kohala. On the morning of 6th February 1927, while Mt. Maya Devi was absent from the house to answer a call of nature, Bahadur entered the room where the two children were, armed with a heavy stick, closed the door by a, chain, and then proceeded to batter the small boy to death. The crying of the children brought neighbours upon the scene. The daughter in the meantime had managed to unhitch the chain and was attempting to open the door when Bahadur struck her. A man called Shahana, who had come on the scene on hearing a clamour finding that Bahadur was inside the room and was refusing to allow anyone to enter, procured a thorn bush, forced the door open and with the thorn bush in front of him proceeded to drive the accused back. The accused in the meantime struck blows with his stick at the thorn bush and, while being forced gradually back, tripped over a charpoy and fell to the ground. Shahana then snatched the stick from his hand and grappled with him. Other persons came into the room and helped in securing the culprit. By this time the boy was dead, but the little girl was still alive and died shortly afterwards of her injuries The fact, as I have briefly narrated them, are not disputed.

4. Counsel for the accused urges that the circumstances of the murder, the fact that no motive for the crime has been proved, and the evidence of two witnesses of certain eccentric conduct on the part of the accused some months prior to the crime, and the further fact that the accused had at one time, not very remote, received some injuries to his head, all go to prove that the accused at the time he committed the act in question was incapable of knowing that he was doing wrong. This is the view which the learned Sessions Judge has adopted; but in my judgment it is a view which cannot reasonably be held on the facts of this case.

5. Where an accused person relies upon Section 84, I.P.C., to escape the legal consequences of his act, the onus is upon him to prove that he was, at the time when the act was committed, by reason of unsoundness of mind, incapable of knowing its nature that what ho was doing was either wrong or contrary to law. That onus may be discharged by producing evidence as to the conduct of the accused shortly prior to the offence and his conduct at the time or immediately afterwards, also by evidence of his mental condition, his family history., and so forth. If contemporaneous acts of his are proved to have been of such a nature as to indicate that he was quite incapable of forming rational views, that would be a strong element to show that at the time of the crime in question he was not capable of knowing that it was a wrongful act. In the present case, however, no evidence has been produced or any contemporaneous acts of the accused. Nothing has been told us of his behaviour during the days immediately preceding the crime, but some evidence has been produced by which it is sought to prove that he behaved with remarkable eccentricity some time prior to the event in question."

6. The two witnesses, who have been called to prove this matter,